The present invention relates to shotgun shot choking systems in general and to removable choke tubes and in particular to individual and series of choke tubes having their length and internal dimensions specifically designed to provide a specific effect on shot pellets delivered by a shotgun.
Applicants are very familiar with the choke tube described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,452,535 which has an inventor common to this invention and which is assigned to the assignee of this application.
The choke tube, or retarding device disclosed in the '535 patent utilized a plurality of radial projections which extend inwardly of the bore of the shotgun barrel to engage a plastic shotgun shell shot wad/shot cup in order to permit the individual shot pellets carried by the shot cup to continue moving forward in an uninterrupted pattern while the wad/cup is retarded to cause it to lag behind the released pellets so as to not interfere with their pattern. This retarding device provided greatly improved shot patterns, that is, greatly increased the number of pellets contained within a given diameter and at any given distance from the muzzle of the shotgun.
At the time the application for the '535 patent was filed, it was believed that additional conditioning devices such as the shot spreader (FIG. 3) or the choke 72 or choke 86 (FIGS. 4-6) would need to be utilized in order to further adjust and fine tune the pellet pattern. While these additional devices have some influence on the pellet pattern, these additional devices usually did not tighten the pattern, but rather caused a dispersal of the pellet pattern, which is at times desired.